Telltale Games is an American independent digital publisher, founded in June of 2004. The company has in its portfolio games like The Walking Dead, Tales From The Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us. Few days ago, the studio launched the first of six chapters of The Game of Thrones new game, entitled Iron from Ice.
With a gameplay based on decision trees, Iron from Ice offers an experience of narrative construction to the player. The game adapts the choices you make and the story is tailored by how you play. Even simple dialogues are constructed to give to the player the sensation of meaning choices, like in the example below:
As its predecessor – The Walking Dead – the game is not 100% based on dialogues, it also offers some ability tests and moral choices to the player. It’s interesting to play it more than one time, trying to choose different options to watch different outcomes in the narrative.
This kind of experience shows us a new way to read a story, and Gee (2003, p.13) remembers us that “when people learn to play video games, they are learning a new literacy”. This author (2003, p.14) also emphasizes that there are different ways to read different types of texts; in this context, literacy is multiple, then, in the sense that the legal literacy needed for reading law books is not the same as the literacy needed for reading physics texts or superhero comic books. This game idea is not new, and we have some old examples from the 80’s that share the same game mechanics. The point is: with the new generation of consoles, a game like this one becomes exponentially full of possibilities for experimental narratives.
Check the trailer below:
And the gameplay:
Reference:
GEE, James Paul. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
With a gameplay based on decision trees, Iron from Ice offers an experience of narrative construction to the player. The game adapts the choices you make and the story is tailored by how you play. Even simple dialogues are constructed to give to the player the sensation of meaning choices, like in the example below:
As its predecessor – The Walking Dead – the game is not 100% based on dialogues, it also offers some ability tests and moral choices to the player. It’s interesting to play it more than one time, trying to choose different options to watch different outcomes in the narrative.
This kind of experience shows us a new way to read a story, and Gee (2003, p.13) remembers us that “when people learn to play video games, they are learning a new literacy”. This author (2003, p.14) also emphasizes that there are different ways to read different types of texts; in this context, literacy is multiple, then, in the sense that the legal literacy needed for reading law books is not the same as the literacy needed for reading physics texts or superhero comic books. This game idea is not new, and we have some old examples from the 80’s that share the same game mechanics. The point is: with the new generation of consoles, a game like this one becomes exponentially full of possibilities for experimental narratives.
Check the trailer below:
And the gameplay:
Reference:
GEE, James Paul. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
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